GE Hosts World’s First Science Fair on Vine

General Electric (GE) is taking science fairs out of school libraries and gymnasiums and putting them on the Internet in what it calls the world’s first science fair on Vine.

The #6SecondScience Fair will include videos from GE as well as the general public. According to a rep, the brand saw “100+ Vines created” in the first 24 hours.

As of August 12, the brand says it has more than 350 user-generated Vines plus seven from GE itself.

GE will create and curate these videos from August 8 to 15. To participate, the brand tells consumers to download Vine, “fit as much science as you can into 6 seconds” and share on Twitter with the hashtag #6SecondScience.

GE is aggregating content on Tumblr and across its social platforms. The #6SecondScience Tumblr is linked to the GE Tumblr. GE says it will highlight the best in show by retweeting, revining and reblogging.

“We want to reshare as many as possible,” says Katrina Craigwell, digital marketing manager with GE. “It’s not so much us looking for the smartest and best experiments, we want the community to participate with us and we want them to have as much fun as we do. It’s about participating and resharing.”

For their participation, the brand will send science kits to contributors so they can continue the experience, Craigwell says. The gift kits include a thank you card, bumper sticker and a 4M Kitchen Science Kit.

GE says it was one of the first brands on Vine and has already seen success with the first video tagged with #6SecondScience. Posted in February, the original video has received over 130,000 likes and 105,000 revines on Vine, GE says.

What’s more, she says the subsequent addition of a revine feature to the app helped boost shares, too.

“It’s very visual and we love programming that allows the community to create along with us and open them up to science,” she says.

The campaign is an effort to bring together science and technology enthusiasts “around a simple, smart moment,” she says. It’s another way for the brand to interact with enthusiasts, “pull back the curtain a bit and invite them in to do things with us,” she adds.

GE says it is using a mix of traditional and native advertising to help drive user-generated content and views on Tumblr, as well as to promote awareness. That includes promoted tweets, sponsored stories on Facebook, Tumblr mobile in-stream units, BuzzFeed partner content, Mashable lift and branded content and Vine display ads via content management system RebelMouse.

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